onebehind | magician's apprentice | been a hell of a ride but I'm thinking it's time to grow

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magician's apprentice | been a hell of a ride but I'm thinking it's time to grow

Dylan knew, coming out of the hospital if not going in, that getting sober wasn't going to be easy. He knew he'd have bad days and good days and days in between, and every therapist he's seen since then, every meeting he's been to has only reaffirmed that. They'd also armed him with a bag of tricks to deal with everything and everything in between, but -- well, today is one of the bad ones and nothing is helping. He's been pacing the house like a madman for the better part of the day, trying to find something to hold his attention long enough that he can stop thinking about running down to the nearest liquor store. He needs to get out of his skin. He's just shy of calling his sponsor. He needs to get out of the house.

He needs to get out of the house.

Stopping midway through moving a pile of books from one side of the living room to the other, he latches onto that idea and turns it over in his head. He needs to get out of the house.

He's moving again a second later, though this time, it's with a purpose, a clarity he hasn't felt like he's had in hours, days, weeks. He goes to Jack's room, tapping lightly on the door, and then after a beat and once he's been invited in, sticks his head in. Flashing him a smile that's equal parts reassuring and strained (he's fine, they're fine, this is nothing bad, he's just a little jittery, don't mind him), he tells him, "Hey. Pack your shit."

He has an idea. It'll be good for both of them.

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Jack appreciates the fact that Dylan still lets him see touch coming - but he doesn't particularly need it at the moment, and he shifts toward Dylan, leaning like a cat toward a hand. He still doesn't look at Dylan, reaching up to rub at the corner of one eye with the side of his hand, pushing back the emotion that's all but blindsided him.

"Yeah?"

"Dunno." But he does know, his own emotions mirroring Jack's. He's at an equal loss as to how to deal with them, however, how to express them in this moment, and so he just lets the connection do the work. The warmth, the love continues, even as Dylan pops one shoulder in a shrug. "Just hey."

Jack snorts, amused - and does finally look over at Dylan again, still leaning into the touch. His purposeful use of the connection is more tentative, a little hesitant, partly because he's not entirely sure what he's doing - but the feeling he's been projecting passively, slowly, gains a little more intent.

It doesn't last long before he pulls back, still nervous, and while he doesn't pull away from Dylan's touch, he does go back to fidgeting with his food. "But, uh. Yeah. I wanna learn more of it. How to do stuff on purpose and everything. And all the stuff like this."

Dylan steps back a second after Jack does, exhaling a slow, vaguely unsteady breath. He, too, curls in over his food a little, and he forces himself to take a bite as a means of steadying himself. It seems to work, too, and once he's swallowed, he nods.

"I was planning on showing you some shit -- " Maybe later rather than sooner, but. " -- but have we talked about it being only at home or in case of emergency, at least until you're older?"

Jack had already turned his attention back to his food, that still ingrained instinct to eat quickly before someone tried to take it lingering now that the emotion is passing, and he nods. "Yeah I know," he says once he's swallowed. "Keep it secret and all that so no one has to be flashy-thinged. Kinda makes it even cooler, though."

Dylan snorts.

"You know, I'm surprised we don't have one of those." We, in this case, being the Eye. "Then again, though, maybe we do, and I just got flashy-thinged into forgetting it."

"Can't you just like... do it magically if you have to?" Jack asks, because he was actually assuming that was a thing - or how it worked, at least. "Like... people get hypnotized into forgetting they've been hypnotized, right?"

The narration is very sorry she is foreshadowing, here.

"Yeah," Dylan agrees, his expression turning more thoughtful as he nods. "I was thinking more, like -- like on a bigger scale, though. I mean, me going through a crowd of people who just saw something they shouldn't have and mindfucking 'em one by one's gonna take time."

Hypothetically. If the people even stuck around for long enough for him to hypnotize them in the first place.

"I guess we could send a group of magicians, in that case, but ... " Somehow, that doesn't seem feasible, either.

"Oh, yeah," Jack returns, looking vaguely amused by Dylan's description of the act. A moment later, he shrugs. "Kinda not a thing, anyway, since I really don't plan on running around telling random people about magic being a real thing."

And though he doesn't know, of course, he feels like the Eye would vet its people enough to know they weren't going to do that, if they're so serious about being a secret organization.

"At this point, I was thinking other people, not you." He trusts that Jack wouldn't tell anyone. If he didn't, he would have taken the memory from him as soon as they got back from the Vegas hospital, where he suffered through the DTs.

"But yeah," he finishes, either way.

If he has anything to add after that, it dies on his lips, however, as the man behind the grill comes up with the rest of their food. Dylan turns towards him, passing bits and pieces along to Jack so he's not stuck juggling it all, and he thanks the man in Chinese before nodding to one of the tables.

"Wanna sit?"

Jack takes the food Dylan passes him, offering the cook a smile before he turns away. "Yeah," Jack agrees, heading for one of the small tables and setting down his part of the food before taking a seat himself. "If the rest of this is as good as the fruit things I'm gonna be ruined for Chinese back home forever."

"You're gonna be ruined for Chinese forever," Dylan tells him as he slides into the seat opposite him. He puts his own food down once he's sitting and takes a moment to admire the spread -- or at least to try and figure out where to start.

When he seems to reach some sort of decision, he reaches for it as he continues, "It's like -- you know in Japan, they have these American restaurants where they serve pizza tacos and shit."

They serve what they think Americans eat. Just like American Chinese restaurants serve what Americans think the Chinese eat.

Jack, too, looks over the food. "Pretty sure there's some of those places in New York," Jack returns with a grin as he picks up a skewer of something. "Or, like... you see tourists from Japan wearing shirts that just say 'door' or something. Not like white people don't already wear shirts that have random Japanese shit on them, so I guess I can't really blame them."

Dylan snorts.

"You know, Japanese writing and Chinese writing are based on the same system, so if you can read one of them, chances are you can kinda work out what shit says in the other." Which is to say that he's seen -- and been able to understand -- some pretty tragic shirts, tattoos and the like.

"Guessing you've seen a bunch of tourists with stupid shit tattooed on 'em somewhere?" Jack asks, taking a bite of the skewer.

He pauses a beat. "Where'd you learn Chinese? Your dad?"

He realizes a moment after he asks that he might be poking a wound with the question and there's a little flinch through the connection.

Dylan echoes the flinch without meaning to, his amusement fading. Despite that, though, he forces himself to answer. Jack deserves to know. Jack should know. "Yes and no. He spent a lot of time here when I was little, and he brought me along a couple of times, and I kind of picked up the basics, then. How to say where is the bathroom and shit like that. After, though?"

He shrugs.

"There's a lot of magic history here -- lot of old family friends, too. I kinda did a deep dive, in college, to learn the language."

"Sorry," Jack mutters as he picks a burnt edge of the meat off the skewer and eats it while Dylan answers.

"Nice. I just know English and bad English," he jokes. "And like a handful of Spanish."

Dylan grunts in response to Jack's lingustic prowess, then dismisses it, circling back to the apology with a shake of his head. He offers Jack something gentle, soothing along the connection to go with what he says next. "Don't be. You deserve to know this shit, it's just -- it's been awhile since I've got to talk about my dad."

And it'll always be a sore spot, but like he didn't say, Jack is privileged enough to know. He's pretty sure him screaming into the cabinets under the sink while he was going through the DTs entitles him to the knowledge.

Jack nods. "I want to know?" he admits after a moment. "But I don't want to, like... kick salt on it or whatever."

Mixing the metaphor a little, but he figures it's getting the point across well enough.

The two of them are getting closer all the time, and he feels special that he gets to see a part of Dylan that no one else does, even if it did come about because of that really awful night - but he also wants Dylan to feel like he can talk to him because of that. It's probably a little more of an adult line of thinking than Jack should be dealing with as a seventeen year old, but he grew up quick.

"Nice metaphor," Dylan huffs, regardless.

Again, whatever amusement it draws from him is quick to fade into something more thoughtful and infinitely sadder.

"Most of the time, I don't even know where to start," he continues, at length. It's not that he doesn't want to share, even if yes, it hurts, it's just -- well, like he said. He hasn't really had a whole lot of opportunity to talk about his father. He can't tell anyone he works with, and Miranda dances around the subject for good reason. He's gotten used to keeping it to himself.

Jack just huffs out a laugh, this one more directed at himself.

He takes a bite of food as Dylan answers and then shrugs. "I get it. Just uh... you know. When you feel like it? I'll listen." He offers him a smile that's crooked but real.

For a moment, Dylan's tempted to tell him, albeit not unkindly, that he may be waiting awhile for all that he really doesn't know where to start. He clamps down on the urge, however, instead settling for studying Jack for a minute as he rakes his tongue over his teeth.

"You're allowed to ask questions, too, y'know," he says, instead and finally. Jack's allowed to prompt him on stuff, and it may actually help.

Jack makes a face - again with not wanting to bring up any bad memories for Dylan, but he already apologized for that and had it dismissed. "Okay," Jack returns simply, instead. "But you're allowed to tell me you don't feel like answering."

If Dylan's already having a bad day - like he was today, like led to them going to the Warehouse - he doesn't want to make it worse.

"Deal," Dylan allows, with a firm nod. A pause follows, as he finally takes a bite of his own food, and then, "So, uh."

He really has no idea where they go from here.

Jack mirrors the nod, turning his attention back to his own food for a few moments before Dylan speaks again. He pauses another moment, thinking, and then finishes the bite he's just taken. "So, uh... Maybe we talked about this, but. Did you live in New York at all before I ran into you?"

He's pretty sure they had a discussion about the Brownstone's decor at some point, but that had been before Jack had known the whole truth, and he doesn't think it's come up since then.

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